


True

by cyprith



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 22:03:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1833814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprith/pseuds/cyprith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite her anxiety, Maleficent gives Diaval his freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True

**Author's Note:**

> Anon prompted: tea roses

“We did good by her, eh?” Diaval asked, eyes glittering, standing at Maleficent’s elbow.

In the clearing below, Aurora accepted Balthazar’s pledge of loyalty with a nod of her own. Fair folk cheered. Lights crashed and danced in the heavy blue sky, music dripping like ripened fruit from the flowers of every tree.

High on their hillside, away from the noise and crowds, Maleficent felt Diaval’s joy like a living thing, wild and untamed.

“I have something for you,” she told him.

Puffing his chest, Diaval beamed, much unchanged despite the passage of nearly twenty years. “Oh? A reward for my stunning bravery and mind-wobbling cleverness?”

Though she could not quite bring herself to smile, Maleficent nodded. Her wings sat uneasy on her back, feathers rustling like an ill wind.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Here.”

In her hand, it seemed such an insignificant trinket. A silver chain, a river stone small as a child’s thumbnail, whorled and pitted like the breath of a feather. A shard of nothing, really. A sliver of wind and shadow.

It slipped so easily from her hand into his.

“Ah, a bit of shine for my beautiful self!” Diaval grinned, but she read tension in his eyes that matched her own, saw his shoulders braced as if for a blow. “Of course, by your face, I’m thinking it’s more complicated?”

Maleficent swallowed. The stone in her throat remained. Flittering and fluffing under the pressure of Diaval’s eyes, her wings refused to settle.

“It will allow you the freedom of form,” she told him, pitching her voice for sunlight, though ice clawed at her ribs. “Man, raven, dragon—dog, even, should you choose it.”

The silence that followed lasted a thousand years. Maleficent did not turn her head. She focused on Aurora, instead, her waltz with Balthazar down in the clearing.

Carefully, so carefully, she thought of nothing. She grounded herself in simple, painless things—a muddy hem, laughter, the scent of tea roses on the breeze—and she waited.

Beside her, she felt Diaval shift, heard the quiet hitch in his breath as he looped the charm around his neck.

“This is…” Diaval started. Swallowing, he tried again, “This is a fine gift.”

Below, Aurora accepted a flower crown from a tiny goblin, pink to the ears.

Silent on her hill, Maleficent watched, leagues away from speech.

She knew no word for this, in any tongue—no sound, vast and heavy enough to bear the years between them, to hold the hurts and victories, the laughter and the loss.

She was not certain a word existed at all. 

At last, she managed, “Yes.”

And beside her, Diaval began to laugh.

Gentle as thieves, his hand slipped through hers. Her traitorous wings settled—one around his shoulders—and Diaval leaned in.

“You know,” he said, waggling his brows. “I was really just hoping for a kiss.”

Like mist in heady sun, the ache in Maleficent’s chest faded. Gone, as though it’d never been.

 She smiled—could not help but smile—and shrugged.

“Oh, alright,” she said.


End file.
